Scarlett’s POV
It wasn’t silence.
It only felt like it.
After Elias was shot, everything else became… muffled.
The room didn’t echo anymore. It swallowed sound. Like it had made up its mind to mourn too.
His blood was still warm on my cheek. On my hands. On my clothes.
He fell in front of me like a puppet with its strings cut. One moment filled with secrets and breath, the next, hollow. Unmoving. Gone.
We didn’t speak.
We didn’t cry.
Miriam just cradled herself in the corner, eyes wide and glassy, rocking like her body remembered a rhythm her mind couldn’t catch. Jasper stayed on one knee, as if moving might break something sacred. Or final.
And me? I stared at him.
Elias.
The man I once hated. The one I had cursed in my mind for being complicit.
And yet, the only one who had
